[🇧🇩] Israel and Hamas war in Gaza-----Can Bangladesh be a peace broker?

[Saif]

Brazil to join South Africa's 'genocide' case against Israel

Brazil on Wednesday announced its intention to join a South African-led case before the ICJ in which Israel stands accused of committing 'genocide'

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Brazil to join South Africa's 'genocide' case against Israel
AFP Brasília, Brazil
Published: 24 Jul 2025, 12: 26

A Palestinian boy walks past debris after an Israeli strike on the Bureij refugee camp in the central Gaza Strip on 23 July, 2025 AFP

Brazil on Wednesday announced its intention to join a South African-led case before the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in which Israel stands accused of committing "genocide" in Gaza.

The foreign ministry in Brasilia said the country was "in the final phase of presenting a formal intervention" in the case already formally joined by states including Colombia, Libya and Mexico, and supported by many others.

In December 2023, South Africa brought a case to the United Nations' highest court in The Hague, alleging Israel's Gaza offensive breached the 1948 UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.

Israel denies the accusation.

In rulings in January, March and May 2024, the ICJ told Israel to do everything possible to "prevent" acts of genocide during its military operations in Gaza, including by providing urgently needed humanitarian aid to prevent famine.

A statement from Brazil's foreign ministry denounced what it described as "indiscriminate violence" against civilians and the "blatant use of hunger as a weapon of war."

"The international community cannot remain inert in the face of ongoing atrocities," it read.

Israel is facing growing international pressure to end the war in Gaza that was triggered by a murderous attack on its soil by Palestinian group Hamas on 7 October, 2023.

Israel hit back on Wednesday at accusations it was behind chronic food shortages in Gaza.

More than 100 aid and human rights groups have warned that "mass starvation" was spreading in the war-ravaged territory.

Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has repeatedly denounced an Israeli "genocide" in Gaza.

The UN Genocide Convention defines the term as any of five "acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group."​

 

[Saif]

Netanyahu, Trump appear to abandon Gaza ceasefire negotiations with Hamas

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and US President Donald Trump appeared on Friday to abandon Gaza ceasefire negotiations with Hamas, both saying it had become clear that the Palestinian militants did not want a deal. Netanyahu said Israel was now mulling "alternative" options to achieve i

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Netanyahu, Trump appear to abandon Gaza ceasefire negotiations with Hamas

REUTERS
Published :
Jul 25, 2025 23:11
Updated :
Jul 25, 2025 23:11

A Palestinian holds a cat as he inspects houses destroyed during an Israeli military operation, in Deir al-Balah, central Gaza Strip, July 23, 2025. Photo : REUTERS/Hatem Khaled/Files

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and US President Donald Trump appeared on Friday to abandon Gaza ceasefire negotiations with Hamas, both saying it had become clear that the Palestinian militants did not want a deal.

Netanyahu said Israel was now mulling "alternative" options to achieve its goals of bringing its hostages home from Gaza and ending Hamas rule in the enclave, where starvation is spreading and most of the population is homeless amid widespread ruin.

Trump said he believed Hamas leaders would now be "hunted down", telling reporters at the White House: "Hamas really didn't want to make a deal. I think they want to die. And it's very bad. And it got to be to a point where you're going to have to finish the job."

The remarks appeared to leave little to no room, at least in the short term, to resume negotiations to pause the fighting, at a time when international concern is mounting over worsening hunger in war-shattered Gaza.

French President Emmanuel Macron, responding to the deteriorating humanitarian situation in Gaza, announced overnight that Paris would become the first major Western power to recognise an independent Palestinian state.

Britain and Germany said they were not yet ready to do so but later joined France in calling for an immediate ceasefire.

Trump dismissed Macron's move. "What he says doesn't matter," he told reporters at the White House. "He's a very good guy. I like him, but that statement doesn't carry weight."

Israel and the United States withdrew their delegations on Thursday from the ceasefire talks in Qatar, hours after Hamas submitted its response to a truce proposal.

Sources initially said on Thursday that the Israeli withdrawal was only for consultations and did not necessarily mean the talks had reached a crisis. But Netanyahu's remarks suggested Israel's position had hardened overnight.

U.S. envoy Steve Witkoff said overnight Hamas was to blame for the impasse, and Netanyahu said Witkoff had got it right.

Senior Hamas official Basem Naim said on Facebook that the talks had been constructive, and criticised Witkoff's remarks as aimed at exerting pressure on Israel's behalf.

"What we have presented - with full awareness and understanding of the complexity of the situation - we believe could lead to a deal if the enemy had the will to reach one," he said.

Mediators Qatar and Egypt said there had been some progress in the latest round of talks. They said suspensions were a normal part of the process and they were committed to continuing to try to reach a ceasefire in partnership with the U.S.

The proposed ceasefire would suspend fighting for 60 days, allow more aid into Gaza, and free some of the 50 remaining hostages held by militants in return for Palestinian prisoners jailed in Israel.

It has been held up by disagreement over how far Israel should withdraw its troops and the future beyond the 60 days if no permanent agreement is reached.

Itamar Ben-Gvir, the far-right national security minister in Netanyahu's coalition, welcomed Netanyahu's step, calling for a total halt of aid to Gaza and complete conquest of the enclave, adding in a post on X: "Total annihilation of Hamas, encourage emigration, (Jewish) settlement."

MASS HUNGER

International aid organisations say mass hunger has now arrived among Gaza's 2.2 million people, with stocks running out after Israel cut off all supplies to the territory in March, then reopened it in May but with new restrictions.

The Israeli military said on Friday it had agreed to let countries airdrop aid into Gaza. Hamas dismissed this as a stunt.

“The Gaza Strip does not need flying aerobatics, it needs an open humanitarian corridor and a steady daily flow of aid trucks to save what remains of the lives of besieged, starving civilians,” Ismail Al-Thawabta, director of the Hamas-run Gaza government media office, told Reuters.

Gaza medical authorities said nine more Palestinians had died over the past 24 hours from malnutrition or starvation. Dozens have died in the past few weeks as hunger worsens.

Israel says it has let enough food into Gaza and accuses the United Nations of failing to distribute it, in what the Israeli foreign ministry called on Friday "a deliberate ploy to defame Israel". The United Nations says it is operating as effectively as possible under Israeli restrictions.

United Nations agencies said on Friday that supplies were running out in Gaza of specialised therapeutic food to save the lives of children suffering from severe acute malnutrition.

The ceasefire talks have been accompanied by continuing Israeli offensives on the ground. Palestinian health officials said Israeli airstrikes and gunfire had killed at least 21 people across the enclave on Friday, including five killed in a strike on a school sheltering displaced families in Gaza City.

In the city, residents carried the body of journalist Adam Abu Harbid through the streets wrapped in a white shroud, his blue flak jacket marked PRESS draped across his body. He was killed overnight in a strike on tents housing displaced people.

Mahmoud Awadia, another journalist attending the funeral, said the Israelis were deliberately trying to kill reporters. Israel denies intentionally targeting journalists.

Israel launched its assault on Gaza after Hamas-led fighters stormed Israeli towns near the border, killing some 1,200 people and capturing 251 hostages on October 7, 2023. Since then, Israeli forces have killed nearly 60,000 people in Gaza, health officials there say, and reduced much of the enclave to ruins.​

 

[Saif]

Aid groups warn of starving children in Gaza

Aid groups warned of surging numbers of malnourished children in war-ravaged Gaza as a trio of European powers prepared to hold an ‘emergency call’ Friday on the deepening humanitarian crisis.

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Aid groups warn of starving children in Gaza
Agence France-Presse . Palestinian Territories 26 July, 2025, 01:06

Displaced Palestinians receive lentil soup at a food distribution point in Gaza City in the northern Gaza Strip on Friday. | AFP photo

Aid groups warned of surging numbers of malnourished children in war-ravaged Gaza as a trio of European powers prepared to hold an ‘emergency call’ Friday on the deepening humanitarian crisis.

Doctors Without Borders said that a quarter of the young children and pregnant or breastfeeding mothers it had screened at its clinics last week were malnourished, a day after the United Nations said one in five children in Gaza City were suffering from malnutrition.

With fears of mass starvation growing, Britain, France and Germany were set to hold an emergency call to push for a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas and discuss steps towards Palestinian statehood.

‘I will hold an emergency call with E3 partners tomorrow, where we will discuss what we can do urgently to stop the killing and get people the food they desperately need while pulling together all the steps necessary to build a lasting peace,’ British prime minister Keir Starmer said.

The call comes after hopes of a new ceasefire in Gaza faded on Thursday when Israel and the United States quit indirect negotiations with Hamas in Qatar.

US envoy Steve Witkoff accused the Palestinian militant group of not ‘acting in good faith’.

President Emmanuel Macron said Thursday that France would formally recognise a Palestinian state in September, drawing a furious rebuke from Israel.

Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas on Friday welcomed the announcement, calling it a ‘victory for the Palestinian cause’.

Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu has long opposed a Palestinian state, calling it a security risk and a potential haven for ‘terrorists’.

On Wednesday, a large majority in Israel’s parliament passed a symbolic motion backing annexation of the occupied West Bank, the core of any future Palestinian state.

More than 100 aid and human rights groups warned this week that ‘mass starvation’ was spreading in Gaza.

Israel has rejected accusations it is responsible for the deepening crisis, which the World Health Organisation has called ‘man-made’.

Israel placed the Gaza Strip under an aid blockade in March, which it only partially eased two months later.

The trickle of aid since then has been controlled by the Israeli- and US-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, replacing the longstanding UN-led distribution system.

Aid groups have refused to work with the GHF, accusing it of aiding Israeli military goals.

The GHF system, in which Gazans have to travel long distances and join huge queues to reach one of four sites, has often proved deadly, with the UN saying that more than 750 Palestinian aid-seekers have been killed by Israeli forces near GHF centres since late May.

An AFP photographer saw bloodied patients, wounded while attempting to get humanitarian aid, being treated on the floor of Nasser hospital in the southern city of Khan Yunis on Thursday.

Israel has refused to return to the UN-led system, saying that it allowed Hamas to hijack aid for its own benefit.

Accusing Israel of the ‘weaponisation of food’, MSF said that: ‘Across screenings of children aged six months to five years old and pregnant and breastfeeding women, at MSF facilities last week, 25 per cent were malnourished.’

It said malnutrition cases had quadrupled since May 18 at its Gaza City clinic and that the facility was enrolling 25 new malnourished patients every day.

On Thursday, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees said that one in five children in Gaza City were malnourished.

Agency chief Philippe Lazzarini said: ‘Most children our teams are seeing are emaciated, weak and at high risk of dying if they don’t get the treatment they urgently need.’

He also warned that ‘UNRWA frontline health workers, are surviving on one small meal a day, often just lentils, if at all’.

Lazzarini said that the agency had ‘the equivalent of 6,000 loaded trucks of food and medical supplies’ ready to send into Gaza if Israel allowed ‘unrestricted and uninterrupted’ access to the territory.

Israel’s military campaign in Gaza has killed 59,587 Palestinians, mostly civilians, according to the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory.

Hamas’s October 2023 attack that triggered the war resulted in the deaths of 1,219 people, most of them civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official figures.

Of the 251 hostages taken during the attack, 49 are still being held in Gaza, including 27 the Israeli military says are dead.​

 

[Saif]

UK, France, Germany say Gaza 'humanitarian catastrophe must end now'

The leaders of Britain, France and Germany said Friday the "humanitarian catastrophe" in the Gaza Strip "must end now", as the war-ravaged Palestinian territory faces a deepening crisis.

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UK, France, Germany say Gaza 'humanitarian catastrophe must end now'

AFP Berlin
Published: 26 Jul 2025, 09: 57

A displaced Palestinian girl reacts as she receives lentil soup at a food distribution point in Gaza City in the northern Gaza Strip on 25 July, 2025. Aid groups warned of surging numbers of malnourished children in war-ravaged Gaza as a trio of European powers prepared to hold an "emergency call" on 25 July on the deepening humanitarian crisis. AFP

The leaders of Britain, France and Germany said Friday the "humanitarian catastrophe" in the Gaza Strip "must end now", as the war-ravaged Palestinian territory faces a deepening crisis.

"We call on the Israeli government to immediately lift restrictions on the flow of aid and urgently allow the UN and humanitarian NGOs to carry out their work in order to take action against starvation," they said in a joint statement released by Berlin.

British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said that "the most basic needs of the civilian population, including access to water and food, must be met without any further delay".

"Withholding essential humanitarian assistance to the civilian population is unacceptable," they said.

"Israel must uphold its obligations under international humanitarian law."

More than 100 aid and human rights groups warned this week that "mass starvation" was spreading in Gaza after more than 21 months of war.

Israel has rejected accusations it is responsible for the deepening crisis in Gaza, which the World Health Organization has called "man-made".

Israel placed the Gaza Strip under an aid blockade in March, which it only partially eased two months later while sidelining the longstanding UN-led distribution system.

The European leaders also stressed that "the time has come to end the war in Gaza.

"We urge all parties to bring an end to the conflict by reaching an immediate ceasefire."

"We stand ready to take further action to support an immediate ceasefire and a political process that leads to lasting security and peace for Israelis, Palestinians and the entire region," they said.

Starmer had earlier said he would hold an "emergency call" on Gaza Friday with Macron and Merz.

Palestinian militant group Hamas triggered the conflict with its 7 October, 2023 attack in Israel.

The Hamas attack resulted in the deaths of 1,219 people, most of them civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official figures.

Israel's military campaign in Gaza has so far killed 59,676 Palestinians, mostly civilians, according to the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory.

Of the 251 hostages taken during the attack, 49 are still being held in Gaza, including 27 the Israeli military says are dead.​

 

[Saif]

Israeli fire kills 25 in Gaza

Gaza’s civil defence agency said Israeli fire killed 25 people on Saturday in the Palestinian territory devastated by more than 21 months of war.

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Israeli fire kills 25 in Gaza
Agence France-Presse . Gaza City 26 July, 2025, 23:59

AFP file photo

Gaza’s civil defence agency said Israeli fire killed 25 people on Saturday in the Palestinian territory devastated by more than 21 months of war.

Agency spokesman Mahmud Bassal told AFP the dead included nine people killed in three separate air strikes in Gaza City.

Eleven people were killed in four separate strikes near the southern city of Khan Yunis, while two were killed in a drone strike in Nuseirat refugee camp, he added.

Bassal said three people were killed by Israeli gunfire while waiting for aid in three separate incidents in northern, central and southern Gaza.

One of the three was killed ‘after Israeli forces opened fire on people waiting for humanitarian aid’ northwest of Gaza City, the agency said.

Witnesses told AFP that several thousand people had gathered in the area.

The Israeli military told AFP that its troops fired ‘warning shots to distance the crowd’ after identifying an ‘immediate threat’.

The civil defence agency said another man was killed by a drone strike near Khan Yunis, while one was killed by artillery fire in the Al-Bureij camp in central Gaza.

The Israeli military said it was continuing its operations in Gaza, adding that it killed members of a ‘terrorist cell’ which it accused of planting an explosive device.

It said the air force had ‘struck over 100 terror targets’ across Gaza over the previous 24 hours.

Bassal said civil defence teams also recovered the bodies of 12 people following Israeli bombardment north of Rafah the previous night.

The recovery operation was conducted in coordination with the UN humanitarian office, he said, adding that the bodies were taken to Nasser Hospital in Khan Yunis.

Meanwhile, Hamas officials expressed surprise on Saturday at US president Donald Trump’s accusation that the group ‘didn’t really want’ a ceasefire and hostage release deal for Gaza.

Trump made the allegation of Friday a day after Israel and the United States quit indirect negotiations with Hamas in Qatar that had lasted nearly three weeks.

‘Trump’s remarks are particularly surprising, especially as they come at a time when progress had been made on some of the negotiation files,’ Hamas official Taher al-Nunu told AFP.

‘So far, we have not been informed of any issues regarding the files under discussion in the indirect ceasefire negotiations’, he added

The head of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees said that planned airdrops of aid into the Gaza Strip would not solve severe food shortages caused by months of restrictions on the entry of supplies.

‘Airdrops will not reverse the deepening starvation. They are expensive, inefficient & can even kill starving civilians,’ UNRWA chief Philippe Lazzarini wrote on X, calling the wave of hunger affecting Gaza ‘manmade’.​

 

[Saif]

Trump says Israel will have to 'make a decision' on next steps in Gaza

US President Donald Trump said on Sunday Israel would have to make a decision on next steps in Gaza, adding that he did not know what would happen after moves by Israel to pull out of ceasefire and hostage-release negotiations with the Hamas militant group. Trump underscored the importance of secu

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Trump says Israel will have to 'make a decision' on next steps in Gaza

REUTERS
Published :
Jul 27, 2025 22:47
Updated :
Jul 27, 2025 22:47

The son of displaced Palestinian woman Iman Suleiman, from Beit Lahiya, carries a box of aid the family received, distributed by the Emirates Red Crescent, in Gaza City, June 26, 2025. Photo : REUTERS/Khamis Al-Rifi/Files

US President Donald Trump said on Sunday Israel would have to make a decision on next steps in Gaza, adding that he did not know what would happen after moves by Israel to pull out of ceasefire and hostage-release negotiations with the Hamas militant group.

Trump underscored the importance of securing the release of hostages held by Hamas in Gaza, saying they had suddenly "hardened" up on the issue.

"They don't want to give them back, and so Israel is going to have to make a decision," Trump told reporters at the start of a meeting with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen at his golf property in Turnberry, Scotland.​

 

[Saif]

Stopping real-life sinister madness in Gaza

French president Emmanuel Macron, in a post on X last Thursday (on July 24) announced he would recognize Palestine as a state in September at the UN Nations General Assembly. Before him Ireland, Norway and Spain did also decide to recognize a Palestinian state. Giving formal recognition of s

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Stopping real-life sinister madness in Gaza

SYED FATTAHUL ALIM
Published :
Jul 28, 2025 00:09
Updated :
Jul 28, 2025 00:09

French president Emmanuel Macron, in a post on X last Thursday (on July 24) announced he would recognize Palestine as a state in September at the UN Nations General Assembly.

Before him Ireland, Norway and Spain did also decide to recognize a Palestinian state. Giving formal recognition of statehood for Palestinians is no doubt important, but what is more urgent at this moment is to keep them alive so they can enjoy the fruits of any freedom and statehood later. Shouldn't President Macron, who is now leading the movement for this Palestinian cause in Europe, and other governments there be convinced to create pressure on Israel to withdraw the food blockade and stop murdering the helpless Palestinians by forced starvation? In fact, it is a delayed response after a lot of prevarications, play of words and twists of facts to ignore the truth, to have reached a positive decision by at least some European leaders. It is hoped they would now also take forceful steps to allow the Palestinian civilian population in Gaza unhindered supply of food, water and medicine as those are being denied to them by Israel. As if that was not enough, soldiers of the Israel Defence Force (IDF) are pounding the hungry Palestinians trying to approach food distribution points with mortar and tank shells and bombs and bullets from aircraft. It is a kind of cruelty quite unheard of in the modern civilized world. But it is not happening in secrecy, the savagery is being brazenly live streamed for the whole world to watch. So, numberless Palestinian men, women and children, are dying every day. There is no point here counting the exact numbers, because they are being deliberately and systematically murdered by using the weapons such as hunger and bullet at the same time to show the world that the perpetrators can commit such crimes against humanity with impunity in defiance of all international laws and morality.

However, indiscriminate killing of Gazans by Israeli forces has been ongoing during the last 21 months and a week since the Gaza war started. Food carrying vehicles on land and by the sea dispatched by international agencies, sympathetic countries and organisations for the famished Palestinians have never been safe as those were constantly under Israeli attacks. But corralling the Palestinians like animals into a confined space and then shelling and bombing them when they are in desperate search of food is indeed a new dimension added to the Israeli atrocities and being done so with declaration since March last. A graphic description of the barbarity being committed was given to the BBC by a former US Army Special Forces officer who resigned from his role at the Israel and US-backed so-called Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GH). He witnessed 'the shelling of aid-seeking civilians. In an interview with the BBC last Friday (July 25), Lieutenant-colonel Anthony Aguilar said he had never seen such "brutality and use of indiscriminate and unnecessary force against a civilian, an unarmed, starving population". "I have never witnessed that in all the places I've been deployed to war, until I was in Gaza at the hands of the [Israeli forces] and US contractors". "Without question, I witnessed war crimes by the Israeli Defense Forces, without a doubt. Using artillery rounds, firing tank rounds into unarmed civilians is a war crime". He recalled one instance in which a Markava tank fired at civilians, destroying a car as it drove away from the aid site. He also saw mortar rounds being launched into crowds "to keep them controlled". But despite these presentations of a glaring truth by a US army veteran, Israel continues to deny what the rest of the world says a man-made starvation being forced on Gaza. In this way, since May, the Israeli military and private contractors, basically American, have killed more than a thousand people trying to reach food at the distribution centre operated by GHF.

Clearly, it is a mockery of food distribution being enacted by the so-called food delivery centres.

The Western nations so vocal about any violation of human rights elsewhere in the world look quite muted when it comes to the case of Israel, and war crimes are committed against unarmed Gaza civilians. If this is not double standard, then what is?

Even so, one would like to appreciate President Macron for his noble effort at this desperate moment. One would also like to hope that the British prime minister Kier Starmer, despite his unhinged support to whatever Israel does, could finally be convinced (by Macron) to take some steps to prevail on Israel and stop the deadly game being played in Gaza in the name of food distribution to starving human beings.

The only Western world leader who, perhaps, can do something in this regard is the US president Donald Trump. But so far whatever occasional efforts he has made to enforce a ceasefire in Gaza ultimately fell through. But no further move is being made from his side in this regard. The Zionist lobby in his administration appears to have had a stronger influence on him so he may not make any further move in this direction.

But then why is this total dependence on the West, which was actually instrumental in creating Israel and offering blind support to whatever it did and has been doing till now?

What are the next door neighbours of the Gaza enclave and the West Bank like Egypt with its powerful military or those living in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan doing to help their blood brothers in Gaza and other Palestinians in the West Bank being massacred day in, day out by the Israeli forces as well as the Jewish settlers? What even other Arabs in the region doing to save the Palestinians being thus forced to die painful deaths by creating an artificial famine and through the cruel sport of food distribution to the victims of this unspeakable brutality? How can those in the nearby rich Arab countries even eat their sumptuous meals every day when their hapless, starving Palestinian brothers are being denied even a morsel of bread by the occupying Israeli forces engaged in a mission to carry out ethnic cleansing of Palestinian by every means imaginable?

It is the moral courage that is required at the moment to say no to this morbid and gory scenes being enacted in real life in world leaders' plain sight. Will they have that courage?​

 

[Saif]

Israel opening routes into Gaza to increase food aid

Israel military also said it had begun air-dropping food into the Palestinian territory and dismissed allegations of using starvation as a weapon against civilians.

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Israel opening routes into Gaza to increase food aid

AFP Gaza City, Palestinian Territories
Published: 27 Jul 2025, 17: 34

Palestinians return to the Nuseirat refugee camp from a US-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation distribution point near the Netsarim corridor in the central Gaza Strip, some carrying food parcels and others wooden pallets for burning, on 27 July 2025. AFP

Israel declared a "tactical pause" in fighting in parts of Gaza on Sunday and said it would allow the UN and aid agencies to open secure land routes to tackle a deepening hunger crisis.

The military also said it had begun air-dropping food into the Palestinian territory and dismissed allegations of using starvation as a weapon against civilians.

It said it had coordinated with the UN and international agencies to "increase the scale of humanitarian aid entering the Gaza Strip".

UN emergency relief coordinator Tom Fletcher welcomed the pauses, saying on social media he was in "contact with our teams on the ground who will do all we can to reach as many starving people as we can in this window".

The charity Oxfam's regional policy chief Bushra Khalidi called the move a "welcome first step" but warned it could prove insufficient.

"Starvation won't be solved by a few trucks or airdrops," she said. "What's needed is a real humanitarian response: ceasefire, full access, all crossings open, and a steady, large-scale flow of aid into Gaza.

"We need a permanent ceasefire, a complete lifting of the siege."

'Life's wish'

In Gaza City's Tel al-Hawa district, 30-year-old Suad Ishtaywi said her "life's wish" was to simply feed her children.

She spoke of her husband returning empty-handed from aid points daily.

"We hope the aid comes in today, because hunger is killing us day by day," said 44-year-old Mohammed al-Daduh, also in Gaza City. "Egypt said it would send aid, but we don't know if Israel will allow it in."

AFP journalists saw Egyptian trucks crossing from Rafah, with cargo routed through Israel's Kerem Shalom checkpoint for inspection before entering Gaza.

The daily pause -- from 10:00 am to 8:00 pm -- will be limited to areas where Israel says its troops are not currently operating -- Al-Mawasi, Deir el-Balah and Gaza City.

Israel said "designated secure routes" would also open across Gaza for aid convoys carrying food and medicine.

The military said these operations, alongside its campaign against Palestinian armed groups, should disprove "the false claim of deliberate starvation".

Last November, the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu and former Israeli defence minister Yoav Gallant, citing "reasonable grounds" to suspect war crimes including starvation -- charges Israel vehemently denies.

Since Israel imposed a total blockade on March 2, the situation inside Gaza has deteriorated sharply. More than 100 NGOs warned this week of "mass starvation".

Though aid has trickled in since late May, UN and humanitarian agencies say Israeli restrictions remain excessive and road access inside Gaza is tightly controlled.

Before Israel's airdrop of seven food pallets, the United Arab Emirates said it would resume aid flights, and Britain said it would partner with Jordan and others to assist.

'Immediate' airdrops

On Saturday alone, the Palestinian civil defence agency said over 50 more Palestinians had been killed in Israeli strikes and shootings, some as they waited near aid distribution centres.

In a social media post, the military announced it "carried out an airdrop of humanitarian aid as part of the ongoing efforts to allow and facilitate the entry of aid into the Gaza Strip".

Humanitarian chiefs are deeply sceptical airdrops can deliver enough food safely to tackle the hunger crisis facing Gaza's more than two million inhabitants.

A number of Western and Arab governments carried out airdrops in Gaza in 2024, when aid deliveries by land also faced Israeli restrictions, but many in the humanitarian community consider them ineffective.

"Airdrops will not reverse the deepening starvation," said Philippe Lazzarini, head of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA. "They are expensive, inefficient and can even kill starving civilians."

Separately, the Israeli navy brought an activist boat, the Handala operated by the Freedom Flotilla Coalition, into the part of Ashdod, after intercepting and boarding it late Saturday to prevent it attempting to breach a maritime blockade of Gaza.

The legal rights centre Adalah told AFP its lawyers were in Ashdod but had been refused access to the detained crew, 21 activists and journalists from 10 countries.

Media restrictions in Gaza and difficulties in accessing many areas mean AFP is unable to independently verify tolls and details provided by the civil defence agency and other parties.

Israel launched its military campaign in Gaza after Hamas's October 2023 attack resulted in the deaths of 1,219 people, most of them civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official figures.

The Israeli campaign has killed 59,733 Palestinians, mostly civilians, according to the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory.​